Wednesday, December 2, 2015

TimeOut Christmas Burger Challenge

TimeOut London released a posting titled the 'The Best Christmas Burgers in London' and I knew I found a challenge worth doing. I needed to come up with a scoring system that highlighted not only the taste of the burger but also how "Christmass-y" it was. All will be out of 10. The final score will be an average of all 5 sections.

Note: Now that I have finished this challenge, I am debating my scoring system. The 'worth the commute' really only applies to me, so why do you guys care about that? My thoughts on price also varied based on if I was at a location for lunch or dinner. All-Star Lanes for example, I think £14 for dinner to be quite acceptable. I almost feel the main thing people would care about is taste with maybe price being a secondary factor.

TLDR -> Here are my rankings for the Christmas Burger Challenge. Ranked from worst (10) to best (1). #5 and onwards are all tied for 9/10 in terms of taste, so I based the rankings from there based on Christmas factor. Don't let that stop you from trying them all though-- every single one had something that made it fantastic.

Worth the Commute: Working in the City made this about a 15 minute walk from the office. Good as it helps to walk off some of dinner.Score: 8/10Major Ingredients: Fried chicken breast with cranberry glaze, sage and onion stuffing, deep fried brie, and topped with bacon wrapped jalepeños.Score: 9/10Taste: Out of this world. The deep fried brie paired with the cranberry glaze really takes this sandwich to another level. The chicken was incredibly crispy but the meat still maintained it's juiciness. It is quite a beast to devour so go easy on the appetisers- but don't NOT get chicken wings, definitely do. They are fantastic.Score: 9/10Christmas Factor: Well-- the cranberry sauce is definitely Christmas, but chicken is not. Parsnips are fall/winter but again-- is that enough? To be fair I barely tasted the stuffing within all the cranberry and brie goodness. Not sure how Christmas works in your house, but bacon wrapped jalepeños is typically not on our menu.Score: 6/10

Price: £8.50 (no sides)Score: 8/10Worth the Commute: This worked well as we needed to do some Christmas Shopping around Covent Garden. Do not fear though, the Meat * enterprise has multiple locations dotted around London (just may want to check they have this before trudging over there.Score: 7/10Major Ingredients: Sliced turkey, sausage & sage stuffing, cranberry sauce, bacon, gravy.Score: 8/10Taste: The turkey was a tad dry (dangers of sliced turkey), however the
cranberry sauce and gravy offset that quite well. I can see the gravy being a bit dangerous as adding too much would sacrifice the structural integrity of the burger. Maybe offering some on the side in case people wanted a bit more would not go amiss. The stuffing was also quite moist and savoury, it came through quite well in the burger. I am not sure how they made a round piece of bacon-- but they did and it was wonderful. I kept thinking it would make a brilliant breakfast sandwich...Score: 7/10Christmas Factor: We got turkey, stuffing, and cranberry, and no pretension of health. Deck the halls!Score: 8/10

Note-- This was a substitution from the Byron Burger listed on the Time Out article. As it even mentions, there is nothing extremely Christmass-y at all about it, and after seeing Haché's one being advertised, would make a solid contender.

Price: £10.95 (no sides)Score: 8/10

This will make anyone love sprouts...

Worth the Commute: There are quite a few Haché's around (but none in my neck of the woods but
there is one quasi close to work is neighbor Shoreditch) but its worth the commute for sure.Score: 8/10Major Ingredients: Fried turkey patty (not ground, think like a chicken burger but turkey), pork and sage stuffing patty, pigs in blankets, Cranberry sauce,grilled Brussel sprouts Score: 8/10Taste: Oh me oh my-- this was fantastic. The fried turkey was moist, with the sprouts adding a bit of crunch to the entire burger. A nice slathering of cranberry sauce (more like a jam) and a flavourful stuffing patty, not dry one bit. The pigs in the blanket were just a happy bonus to make my eyes twinkle like the Star of Bethlehem. Quite filling even without sides, although the Truffle Fries did sound fantastic.Score: 9/10Christmas Factor: This ticks all the boxes. Although I do not do fried turkey for my holiday, I feel they are definitely in the spirit of the thing. Also, deep fried turkey is delicious and this is simply a smaller scale of that. If I was Saint Nick-- this would be a great way to break up the monotony of cookies and milk being left out for me.Score: 10/10

Score: 6/10Worth the Commute: I would not call Islington 'close' to our flat, but we happened to be in the area for watching a film. And let's be honest, its much easier to get to than Stoke Newington (where another Lucky Chip resides)Score: 6/10

Score: 7/10 (-3 for taste mismatch)Taste: This should have been the winner. In fact, starting this challenge up I was almost sure of it. I was so excited to try this burger. However, the issue with stilton is its saltiness-- and paired with the bacon pushed it well over the top for me. The gin jam added an extra taste sensation, well I would have imagined it would if not overpowered so completely by the cheese. The ONE time I would say cheese did not fit. Score: 3/10Christmas Factor: Again this ticks the boxes, its freaking reindeer. Shame it tasted so bad.Score: 10/10

Price: £12 (with rosemary chips)Score: 8/10Worth the Commute: Cheated a bit here as I had it delivered to my office, but its pretty much on the other side of Liverpool Street station-- a brisk 10 minute London pace from the office.Score: 8/10Major Ingredients: Beef patty, deep fried brie, bacon, cranberry sauce, rocketScore: 8/10 Taste: This class, is the proper use of cheese on a burger. Bird and HB are on track with the winning taste combo of deep fried brie and cranberry. This burger sang to me. The meat was just fantastic; moist and well cooked. Score: 9/10Christmas Factor: Like Bird, I am not sure how Christmass-y a beef burger is. If you would have made this a reindeer burger it would have probably won hands down. An extra point over its competitor though as it least it kept with the central theme (no bacon wrapped jalepeños).Score: 7/10

Price: £14.00 (with sweet potato fries)Score: 6/10 Worth the Commute: Just a bit too far from the office for a sub hour lunch break. Required massive power walking, which was good because I did just eat deep fried turkey.Score: 7/10

Major Ingredients: Fried turkey burger, stuffing, Monterey Jack cheese, treacle-cured bacon, cranberry, skewered with a pig in a blanket. Served with French dip gravy

Score: 9/10 Taste: After gawking at the price (my fault for doing it during lunch), this burger was pretty epic. They molded the turkey burger with the stuffing to form one patty, ensuring seamless integration and delight to the taste buds with every bite. Again, the cranberry did an excellent job of adding a bit of bite to the burger. To be honest, didn't even taste the cheese. Serving with gravy is a stroke of genius. Score: 8/10Christmas Factor: Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, cranberry, AND a pig in a blanket. Jingle my bells!Score: 9/10

Burger #7 of 9: Christmas Special at Burger Shack in the Royal Oak (7.8/10)

Don't judge a book by its cover!!

Price: £10 (no sides)Score: 7/10Worth the Commute: Quite the commute for me no matter how you slice it. I feel this place is worth the trip. I also managed to pair a Christmas Run near the pub so it was not so bad. I really like this pub anyways, great selection of beer and friendly staff. If you live near Baker Street/Marylebone, this lovely drinking/eating establishment should be a firm favourite.Score: 6/10Major Ingredients: Turkey patty, pork/sage/onion patty, bacon, crispy fried onions, bread sauce and topped with cranberry/port ketchup. The only burger place to have the balls to use sloppy bread sauce. This burger will not win any beauty pageants-- but no one should care about that.Score: 9/10Taste: Once again, Burger Shack does not fail to please. Even after my run-- this filled me up quite nicely. The bread sauce made the burger start to fall apart-- but you know what, that did not bug me at all. I just scooped that all up as it was too delicious to leave. The fried onions were a fantastic touch, it actually reminded me more of Thanksgiving than Christmas.Score: 9/10Christmas Factor: The bread sauce puts this burger squarely in the Christmas quadrant. I am sure Santa would not be upset if this was left for him in lieu of cookies.Score: 8/10

Burger #8 of 9: Christmas Burger at Bobo Social (6.0/10)

Price: £13 (no sides)

An artform does not a Christmas burger make...

Score: 5/10Worth the Commute: Goodge street? Ugh. Wrong side of the Northern Line for me and bit of a pain even from work.Score: 5/10Major Ingredients: Beef burger stuffed with stilton and roasted chestnuts, and topped with poached pear. This bad boy definitely raised an eyebrow.Score: 8/10Taste: After the Lucky Chip debacle, I was wary about the Stilton. However, the poached pear did exactly what it should and provide a sweet offset to the salty yet wonderfully smooth cheese. A very buttery brioche nestled everything together. I only mention it because it was quite pronounced. A very tidy burger. Did not taste the chestnuts. Would probably not order it again, but they had some much tastier sounding burgers on their main menu.Score: 7/10Christmas Factor: Well, considering I couldn't taste the main Christmas foodstuff, chestnuts, I guess in the end this turns out to be an interesting, posh, expensive burger.Score: 5/10

Price: £14 (no sides)Score: 4/10Worth the Commute: This burger is only available at the Spitalfields (after 1730) or Knightsbridge (lunch onwards) but luckily the Spitalfields branch is close to the office!Score: 8/10Major Ingredients: Two patties, one turkey and one ginger pig, cheese, cranberry ketchup, sausage gravy for dipping. Allegedly there was supposed to be bacon and sprouts, but neither myself or my burger co-hort tasted this. We did not care.Score: 9/10Taste: Let's be honest, we knew this was going to be expensive and delicious. I definitely went nuts with the gravy. I lost structural integrity about 2/3 of the way and resorted to fork. The was fine because I could get more gravy that way. I was slightly miffed the gravy did not have sausage chunks as everyone else seemed to talk about in their reviews. It was still slurp-able. The sausage patty has a wonderful heat to it, really pairing well with the smooth cheese and tangy cranberry ketchup.Score: 9/10Christmas Factor: If I was Santa, I would never restrict this burger to just Christmas.Score: 7/10